Hey welcome back AwesomeDude2471!

Lol replacing Greater Good??!!

Meathook Massacre is certainly a good card. If you own one, I wouldn't fault you for using it. However, I think I'll leave it out of the list since it doesn't particularly follow this deck's low-to-the-ground approach.

Appreciate the suggestions!

Greater Good Very well might be the best card in the deck.

Hello SueMe! I am back. After playing this amazing deck for almost 3/4 years, I can’t wait sharing some ideas with u. Firstly, Life from the Loam I think is a good choice to this deck because of its Dredge ability. And sometimes I face an awkward situation that I discard most of my hands to cast hogaak as soon as possible so that I cannot play lands constantly. Life from the Loam ensures I can play lands persistently. Besides sometimes some functional lands are milled into graveyard such as Shizo and Rogue’s Paasage. I can use it to bring them back. Secondly, I think Abrupt Decay is a better Putrefy because its cmc is lower and it can destroy more types of permanents. And most of the graveyard hates are below 3 except of Leyline of the Void. Thirdly, I think maybe you should try Hermit Druid again. If we use lesser basic lands, it ensures that we can cast our commander in turn 3. I spend a lot of time finding my account back, otherwise I would share these ideas with u earlier. Hope to hear from you soon. Best wishes!

Hey Carrick142857 welcome back!

Alright, alright! Life from the Loam is going back in. Honestly, between you and me, probably the only reason I took it out is because I don't own it in paper.... Yeeeahhhh, I should probably change that, haha.

You make a good point! In goes Abrupt Decay.

Oh Hermit Druid.... The only reason, well, reasons, that I hesitate is 1) he's a lightning rod for removal (which one could argue is a good thing, perhaps), and 2) I'm too lazy to find the cut and the basic land replacements lol.

Hmmmmmm. Let me think about that one some more.

Anyways, those were some top notch suggestions, thanks!

Hello SueMe it’s me again. Here are some questions I haven’t find out the answer. 1.What’s the use of K’rrik? I think it’s a little weird, so I think perhaps it has some special use which I haven’t found. 2.What do you think of Survival of the Fittest? It’s a little expensive but awesome. 3.Dryad’s Revival is so suitable to this deck. Because sometimes Noxious Revival or something like that may be milked into our graveyard and we can’t use them to pick up something. Hope to hear your opinions

Hey Carrick142857, some interesting thoughts!

The general gist of K'rrik is to make Hogaak even cheaper (8/8 for mill plus life), since having untapped creatures is the limiting factor much of the time. Besides that, he's also pretty decent for ramping out all our other black spells.

Survival of the Fittest eh? Well, it's certainly out of my budget (I still only own 2 of the 7 fetches in paper... I know, yikes!).... But I suppose it makes a solid Maybeboard addition, for the semi-cdh players out there.

I like the idea behind Dryad's Revival! It's just a bit slow for the effect it gives. If I had to choose, I think I'd add in Creeping Renaissance or Diregraf Rebirth instead.

Hi! What do you think about swapping Carrion Feeder for Bloodthrone Vampire? My reasoning here is that it’s 1:2 (1 sac creature = 2 power) which is very relevant in P/T effects such as Disciple of Bolas as a Hogaak backup in case opponent respond to kill our big guy Hogaak.

Hey welcome back killer_eye!

I'm not sure about replacing Carrion Feeder. Our curve being what it is, I'd prefer keeping 1-drops instead of expanding our 2-drop slot.

You do make an interesting point! Perhaps Bloodthrone Vampire should go in somewhere....

Hey man! Nice deck. I've been playing Hogaak as a commander since he's been released. I know you're not trying to Voltron here...but Hatred is too mean to pass up! Even if you're not using it to kill...which you would be, you can use it to significantly turn up that card draw.

Q: How do you shortcut the execution of the “Greater Good + Zombie Infestation + Hogaak” combo because at some point we need to stop the draw either we got the last piece of our combo finisher or just to stop in order not to deckout ourself.

As for context about post #42, I’ve executed the combo twice once the table recognize it’s an infinite draw the table let me dig-in to whatever I’m looking for but I don’t have an efficient and clear way on how I can execute this combo in a shortcut way

Hey, welcome kingc0rn!

I see what you're saying. I probably wouldn't use Hatred in particular, due to the mana cost (also the potential feel-bads of removal in response). A couple more solid options would probably be Boon of Boseiju, or even Vines of Vastwood, which doubles as protection (and triples as a counterspell for auras, haha).

Interesting idea! I'll consider these.

Welcome back killer_eye!

This is probably something I should add in to my description, since I've had someone else wondering that exact thing.

In a situation where you can filter through your deck, but you have zero mana available, you can:

1. Cast Lotus Petal into Sacrifice into Phyrexian Altar (hopefully by using Zombie Infestation, you'll have enough sacrifice fodder to pay for the Korozda Guildmage combo).

2. Flashback Dread Return for Bone Miser, and discard lands until Phyrexian Altar.

3. Flashback Dread Return for K'rrik, Son of Yawgmoth, and pay 2 life for Sacrifice, and get Phyrexian Altar.

Feel free to let me know, anyone, if there's another line I'm missing!

Thanks but what I'm looking for is a method on how to show the Greater Good combo process fast enough up to the point before we proceed with the winning step.

For context, my playgroup let's me dig-in for what I'm looking for but this Greater Good combo takes a lot of time, they want to skip into the winning step wherein interactions are waiting from the opponent side so they're asking if I have a way to shortcut that Greater Good combo step.

Oh, I see. Hmm.

I might need more time to answer this one, but so far, I can't think of a way to save time without... ya know, cheating. I suppose this should be a discussion between you and your playgroup; what shortcuts would they allow to save time?

If you want to go all in on the shortcuts, you could just tutor for the things you need, and mill almost everything else (up to the last card you tutored). And... somehow calculate the amount of zombies you would have made. It would be murky for sure.

Thanks, I always execute it in a proper way and it was my first time to be put in such situation I’ve thought maybe you’ve gone through the same thing and ask.

Tamiyo's Safekeeping if there’s a need for more protection specially for non-creature permanent.

Here’s another suggestion: Endurance, what it does is gives us a “free way” for another chance to execute “kill the table step” with a condition that the greater good combo is still intact.

Ohhh I actually really like that suggestion! If there's one thing this deck is lacking, it's graveyard protection. Endurance in particular looks pretty flexible too; it can hose the other graveyard decks at times.

Endurance is also a combo protection. Let’s say we have the Greater Good combo and about to cast our wincon let’s say we’re casting Phyrexian Altar or Altar of Dementia and opponent has a way to disrupt us either with counterspell or artifact removal. What we do is cast Endurance for free, shuffling our graveyard to bottom of our library and “restart” greater good combo and repeat the wincon attempt.

We can also sacrifice Endurance to Greater Good before resolving ETB of Endurance so that it will be included in the shuffle.

Hi another suggestion here: Emergence Zone, execute the combo at instant speed, uses:

• Execute the combo at end step of the player before our turn and re-try again on our turn if it fizzles.
• As a response from disruption while executing the combo.

Disadvantage: It's colorless, Not yet sold with it and still in testing stage.

Sorry if I've been noisy here recently, I'm just enjoying my time with Hogaak and tuning my budget version ($200). Here's my list: https://www.moxfield.com/decks/Xt7pCisdvEOYDhO4jE_MeQ your list is one of my references in building the deck.

@ killer_eye

Not at all! These are all super solid suggestions; the more the merrier!

Most likely the colorlessness won't hurt us too hard. Do let me know if Emergence Zone is worse in testing, though.

Have you seen my Budget List? I haven't updated it in forever, but it could give some ideas.

Hi! just want to ask if you’re in a situation where you can only choose between categories: protection (Heroic Intervention + Tamiyo's Safekeeping) or anti-counterspell (Autumn's Veil + Veil of Summer), which of this categories would you choose and why? thanks in advance.

Oh you making me choose, aiyaiyai lol...

I should preface this by saying that a lot of what this entire list is, at this point, is theoretical. I don't remember the last time I pulled out this deck against my playgroup, so I can't really back any of my card-preferences with experience.

That said, with my "theoretical expertise", I judge the protection cards to be more well-rounded than the anti-counterspells, at least in my meta. Partially because they have no color restrictions, but also because boardwipes tend to be more prevalent than counterspells for me.

It’s me again :) with another suggestion:

Caldaia Guardian: another Greater Good combo piece, this being a creature makes it a better Desecrated Tomb gives immediate value as convoke for Hogaak and synergizes with the deck’s recursion/ reanimation effects.

Hey again killer_eye! Back with the stellar suggestions, I see.

It looks like Caldaia Guardian doesn't go infinite with Greater Good + Hogaak, but in that scenario, the slightest discard outlet draw would do it.

As the card stands overall, I'm not so sure. This is where the playtesting experience would come in handy.

I'll try finding a spot for it when I've got the mental energy lol.

Thanks, as always!